How to Gain More Willpower

• If you want to consistently achieve your goals, using willpower can be a useful tool.
• Planning breaks in routines and managing stress can be helpful in harnessing willpower.
• Realizing what really motivates you can also be helpful in exercising willpower.

If you’re having trouble achieving your goals, you may lack willpower or the ability to regulate your impulses.

Typically, willpower is associated with self-control, and people with more self-control get better grades and have fewer substance abuse problems, according to research.

So the more willpower you have, the better off you are likely to be in life. But if you feel like you don’t have much willpower, can you increase it to lead a more successful life? It turns out psychologists haven’t really settled on an answer to that.

Some argue that it’s possible to increase your self-control through exercise, including Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist and author of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.

But others say there isn’t much conclusive evidence that we can improve our self-control. So what can you do?

Baumeister points out that many people who seem to have great self-control don’t necessarily have more willpower than others: they may just know how to use it more effectively, through tools like implementation intentions and stress management.

So next time you need some strong determination, here are a few tips to keep in mind.

1. Start with small changes

Baumeister says self-control is like a muscle: “You can train it regularly and it gets stronger.”

“You can find, for example, that people who join the military often come out with a lot more self-control than when they started because it’s an environment that encourages discipline and self-control,” he says.

But you don’t have to join the military to build self-control. Many studies over the last few decades have found evidence that small lifestyle changes can also improve overall self-control. For example:

• A 1999 study conducted by Baumeister found that students who exercised their willpower through posture, mood, and eating exercises also performed better on other self-control tasks.
• A 2015 study showed that subjects who exercised their self-control through hand grip exercises performed better academically, suggesting their overall willpower had improved.
• Other studies have shown that just thinking you have unlimited willpower allows you to exercise more self-control.

Suffice it to say that willpower is a more abstract concept and the evidence is mixed. If you still want to exercise willpower, Baumeister suggests starting by making small changes in your life that require minimal willpower, such as: B. Making your bed every morning.

2. Get adequate sleep and manage stress levels

When you’re stressed, tired, or otherwise not at your best, you’ll have a harder time making good decisions.

In particular, sleep deprivation affects various regions of the brain, including those that control reward processing. When this part of your brain is affected, you’re more apt to make impulsive decisions — which means your self-control is lower.

To keep your willpower as strong as possible, try to make sure you get at least seven hours of sleep each night. Stress management techniques, including meditation, can also help.

3. Avoid triggers

If you know you’re not controlling yourself well, try to minimize the number of difficult decisions you have to make each day and design your environment to help you avoid temptation.

This strategy is called situation selection. Rather than boosting existing willpower, it makes willpower less necessary—allowing you to succeed with relatively little self-control.

4. Plan ahead

If you already have a plan of what to do in a tempting situation, it will make it easier to navigate that situation when it finally occurs. This technique is called implementation intentions.

For example, if you’re trying to make a habit of reading before bed every night, you might make a plan to read on your subway ride home from work instead when plans come up. That way, when the day comes that you have plans for the evening, you already know what needs to be done to stay on track and achieve your goals.

These implementation intentions do not change your willpower. “But they automatically tell the subconscious what you have to do and what you have to pay attention to so that you don’t need so much willpower for the process of control,” says Baumeister. “It’s like establishing a habit.”

5. Identify what really motivates you

Your ability to chase after your goals also depends on how motivated you are. When properly motivated, you can often get more work done while putting in less effort.

But what does it mean to be properly motivated? There are a few different types of motivation, says Michael Inzlicht, a researcher and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto.

1. Intrinsic motivation is something you are motivated to do for its own sake.

2. Extrinsic motivation is something you are motivated to do in order to achieve an external goal.

For example, if you want to become a professional swimmer because you love swimming, you are intrinsically motivated to swim. But if you want to become a professional swimmer to make your parents proud, that’s extrinsic motivation.

People who are intrinsically motivated tend to have longer-lasting determination, Inzlicht says. “It’s difficult to find ways to motivate yourself to achieve your goals for the right reasons, but it’s probably the best advice I can give anyone,” he says, adding:

“When you love a specific goal, you don’t need willpower to achieve it, and you are less succumbing to the daily pressures or stress that would keep you from achieving your goal.”

Insider snack

Whether or not you can increase your brain’s willpower directly is up for debate.

Regardless, there are many techniques you can employ to improve your apparent self-control. Managing your stress levels, avoiding triggers, and taking conscious action are all strategies you can use.

“You don’t necessarily want to educate yourself to increase your willpower, but to deal with it better,” says Baumeister.